


Nothing

by Voiid_Vagabond (Saturn_the_Almighty)



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, House of X/Powers of X, Hurt No Comfort, I'm sure this can be considered as such, Krakoa, Love Confession, M/M, Morality, Sad, Self-Indulgent, Unrequited Love, i think, or lack thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29161110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saturn_the_Almighty/pseuds/Voiid_Vagabond
Summary: "I could have told you that I loved you long ago, Charles Xavier. But it never seemed like the right time." Charles opened his mouth but didn't get to speak. "I waited and I waited and I never stopped knowing that I loved you."
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier (one-sided)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> I was talking with my brother after I finished House of X/Powers of X and they said some things that made sense and yet also made me very distressed and I couldn't stop thinking about it so I had to write this to make myself feel better :) could be ooc because HoX/PoX is the only series I've read in a long fucking time and I don't have all the canon

"Hello, Erik." Charles' voice carried to where Erik was just emerging from the trees and onto the outcropping on which they had watched the fireworks and the Krakoan celebrations. _Just look at what we have made._

"Charles," he muttered by way of greeting and went to stand behind the telepath. Charles was sitting cross-legged where the grass gave way to rock and he shifted slightly to his left. Erik didn't sit.

"I need to talk to you, to—”

"Get something off your chest?" Charles waved his right hand in the air in front of him like he was brushing aside formalities.

Erik crossed his arms, frowning under his helmet. "Would it kill you to let me finish my thoughts on my own?"

"Why do that when I could tuck into your mind, old friend?" Charles grinned, a sharp thing which peeked out from under Cerebro.

"You wonder why I wear the helmet," Erik remarked drily.

"I don't. You know that helmet isn't for me."

Erik stared off into the pacific dusk. "Let me pretend that it is."

"I won't let you _pretend_ anything, my friend." Charles laid the words out like there were a million different meanings to them and Erik wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that there _were._

"Just listen to me. Listen to my _words,_ not my thoughts. Then I'll get out of your hair."

Charles pursed his lips at that, head tilting up and back to look at the fleeting little grin that passed over Erik's face at his joke. At least, he assumed that's what Charles was looking at. Never could tell, Cerebro and all.

Erik swept forward, guiding his cape in an arc as he lowered himself to the ground in front of Charles. He let Charles come to terms with the fact that they were so close now that their knees bumped together if either of them so much as shifted slightly.

Erik lifted the helmet from his head without touching it.

"Yours too, come on," he said lightly, floating his helmet down to rest sideways in the grass. Charles hesitated.

"Please."

It came off immediately. Erik glanced at their helms, lying side by side. He laced his fingers together in his lap, took a breath and cleared his throat. He lowered his mental shields as he spoke, feeling Charles sweep in with a burst of warmth and curiosity.

"I am in love with you," Erik started. Blunt. "Entirely. I fell, and… I didn't want to climb back up. I love you like no other man on this Earth. I love you in so many ways—” and he pressed up against Charles' presence, clipped thoughts and feelings and half-formed memories tumbling out and over him.

Charles stared at him like he knew it. Like it wasn't at all a surprise. Charles stared at him like he hadn't known that _this_ was the moment Erik would tell him. And truth be told it was far from what Erik had imagined, late nights and dark mornings where he'd run through the scene in his head and tried to imagine all the outcomes to confessing how he loved Charles.

It wasn't ideal, but no moment ever would be. He'd realized that.

Charles didn't speak, not with his mouth and not with his mind. He simply laid his piercing gaze upon Erik and did not waver, letting him count the very seconds which passed between them.

"Do you want the truth?" Charles finally said, his mouth twisting with the words into something just this side of bitter, an expression which Erik imagined would smell like copper.

"I expect nothing less than the truth from you _always,_ Charles." Erik could not ignore the way his stomach spiraled into nausea, wary about the way Charles formed his words, how he'd begun to retreat from the surface of Erik's mind.

"You don't want me."

The thing about Charles Xavier was that every word that flowed from his throat was fashioned into _truth._ Anything he said could sound like an undisputed fact. Unfortunately for him, Erik knew that.

"Do not _ever_ tell me what I do and do not want." Erik unlaced his hands and pointed sharply at Charles. "That is for _me_ to decide."

Charles draped him with a cold, flat gaze. "You don't want me," he repeated. "And if you do? _Not for long."_ He tapped the side of his head with two slender fingers and Erik felt despair threading its way around his throat. He'd insinuate _wiping,_ altering Erik's mind all because he so hated the idea of Erik loving him?

"Not quite," Charles practically hissed. Erik wanted to move away from him but he felt like he was bolted to the ground. "But we can't."

And why not? Why couldn't they be more than friends stretched thin over time, pulled and snapped like old rubber bands over and over again? Erik had always felt like when the pulling stilled, when they were allowed to breathe every once in a while, they'd slide back, their material memory unweathered by time.

_Old friends._ That's what they were, even if arguments muddied the waters, if ideals dyed them red.

"Why not?" Charles echoed. Erik frowned. He'd been practically shouting in his head, hadn't he?

"Because I'm controlling. Because I'm always in your head, I always _will be._ I have your entire will at my fingertips. I have molded countless people's minds to be exactly what I need them to be. I make _no move_ without purpose, without gain."

Charles scraped any emotion off his words as he tossed them down between the two. Hardened, brittle ones that he so hoped would glisten like truths to Erik.

"Life isn't your chess game, Charles," Erik said flatly.

"It is."

Erik huffed a breath. "Is that what people think?" He asked incredulously.

"It is what _I_ think." Charles breathed cold into the creases of Erik's skin, the lines that time had painted upon him.

"You're incredibly powerful, my dear friend, and you have Cerebro strapped to you nearly every single moment. How do you know which thoughts are yours and which ones you're hearing from elsewhere? You _can't_ in good conscience tell me that you have never gotten turned around in there."

Charles' gaze hardened, became crystalline. Erik could practically _feel_ the facets poking into his skin, cerulean and glistening and harmful.

"What's the point of this?" Charles demanded. Erik thought he might scramble to his feet and leave at any moment.

"You tell me," he said.

Charles bristled. "Why can't you just be content with what we have?" He snapped. Erik so rarely saw him lose his composure so completely. He narrowed his eyes at Erik like he could cut him with the darkness shrouding his pupils.

"I can't help but want more, I'm sorry," Erik admitted.

It couldn't get worse, could it? He might as well lay everything out. Usually, people responded to an 'I love you' with 'me too' or 'give me some time, I need to think about us.' Not 'do you want the truth?'

He sounded dejected, like there was something shameful in wanting more for yourself. He _wanted_ to be loved. He wanted to be able to _love someone._

"You want me to love you back?" Charles' voice sounded like an echo from somewhere distant, not entirely like himself. Erik felt like he was drifting away from this conversation but his body stayed put.

"If you can. That'd mean the world to me." The words were full to spilling, but his throat was empty of tone. This wasn't at all how he thought it'd go.

"Magneto, look at me." Erik snapped his eyes up to meet Charles, more frightened by the fact that he'd called him _Magneto_ than by the sharpness in his voice.

"My relationships are _transactional._ Just look at me and Moira. I wanted something from her, she wanted something from me." Charles spoke slowly, like if he did then Erik would suddenly understand why. Why he'd read everything _wrong_ somehow.

"I _do_ want something from you." It was a whisper and Erik dragged his walls back up so Charles couldn't see what it was unless he kicked them down.

Actually, he could take those walls down with a flick of his finger.

Charles shook his head. "Not something I can give without tearing you apart like damp newspaper. Not something that I can give like any other mentally _baseline_ person." He spat his words out like acid and Erik was surprised they didn't burn.

But he didn't give up. He wouldn't be alive if he simply threw in the towel because—

"Are you trying to make me believe that you're totally undesirable? All I want from you is what you're ready to give to me. And in return I will stay by your side and give you _all of me."_ He was pouring his heart out into a silver cup, a glittering liquid that threatened to spill over.

Charles wasn't having it. He stood in one fluid motion, his eyes flicking to Cerebro for a split second before he abandoned it on the ground in favor of stalking a few paces away.

"And what if that's nothing? Erik, you won't devote yourself to a man who can't appreciate it. You deserve more than that. As someone who's lost so much… you deserve to gain something after all this time." Charles sounded wistful, a juxtaposition to his earlier venom and Erik found himself rising too, his cape following as he strode to Charles' side.

"Aside from this?" He swept his hand out over the island, _their island, their home, just look at what we have made_ — "Something more than a safe haven for my people, a place of freedom and joy? I have gained much, Charles. Make no mistake."

Charles crossed his arms firmly around his chest. The space between his eyebrows twitched, an aborted glower. "I feel like we're getting nowhere."

Erik sighed. He fought the urge to rest his hand on Charles' shoulder. It didn't feel right, now. "We are. You say I don't want you because you're what, psychopathic? Because you've done terrible things in the name of something beautiful? Does that not sound familiar?" He raised an eyebrow, hoping that his friend would catch on to what he meant.

Charles stared at him, seeing but not quite _seeing_ him. Then, a moment of silence. A breath in.

"Do not settle for me, Erik. That's the last thing I'll say about this." Charles turned away and Erik caught his shoulder, maybe a little more forcefully than he needed.

"Shut up," he spat, finally fed up.

"Excuse me?"

_"You heard me._ Shut up." His voice was wavering but what did it matter? "I am not going to let you convince me out of _decades_ of feelings. I know that this is real." He pressed the tips of his fingers to his chest, right over his heart.

"I could have told you that I loved you long ago, Charles Xavier. But it never seemed like the right time." Charles opened his mouth but didn't get to speak. "I waited and I _waited_ and I never stopped knowing that I loved you."

Erik couldn't even take a breath because if he did he'd stop talking and something bad would happen, Charles would say something that would slice him open, throat to navel, and he _could not bear that_. Not until he'd said his piece.

"I love you because you are not perfect. I love you despite your sour actions and your missteps and all the things you do." He did. Despite. Erik fell for the flaws, for the scars and burns. For the lives taken, sacrificed, saved. He fell over and over, every single time they met.

"This isn't me _settling_ for you. If you expect me to walk away and find someone better then I will be gone forever because as far as I care to look there _is_ no one better." He took a small step forward and he could see in Charles' eyes that he wished he was still wearing Cerebro because his face was so open and it took so much out of him to school it into neutrality.

"There is no one for me but you. And I will take what you give. Even if that is nothing. We should be—” Erik took Charles' hand in his own two, covering it top and bottom.

"By each other's side," Charles finished. His voice was thin but sincere. He faced Erik again, offering him a lopsided smile that burned with unspoken words and he imagined it would taste like salt in a wound.

Charles pulled his hand away. Erik let him.

"You are a man who waits for nothing, Erik. And now you wait…" Charles turned away, a confident movement that Erik couldn't stop. He lowered Cerebro back over his eyes, picking up Magneto's helmet too. "For nothing," he finished, pushing the helmet into Erik's hands.

His footsteps faded as Erik stood on the outcropping.

Dusk swam into night. The sky dripped with stars, blinking into view as the blackness began to blanket him.

And Charles gave him all that he could.

Nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Despite what it may seem? This did actually make me feel better :') if I say that enough times maybe it'll be true. Jkjk I am genuinely proud of this, I think it's some of my better work! Comments and kudos are very much appreciated ♥️
> 
> I may or may not write more to this depending on the response, be it more angst or a happier addition :)


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